When Coya asks David Falkayn why he must go on the mission to Babur, he replies:
"'You know why. Experience. For over thirty years, I've been dealing with nonhumans; and Adzel, Chee, and I make a damned efficient unit.'" (I, p. 34)
Experience is the reason that Admiral Kirk gives for resuming command of the Enterprise in the first Star Trek feature film although his original mission lasted not for thirty years but for five, the same as the first Grand Survey in Anderson's "Wings of Victory."
Returning from Babur, Muddlin' Through is:
"As swift as any vessel in that near-infinitesimal droplet of the galaxy which we have slightly explored..." (XI, p. 158)
For the recurrent theme of the barely explored galaxy, see here. The first person plural pronoun identifies the narrator of this novel as a contemporary of the Muddlin' Through crew rather than as that almost imperceptible omniscient narrator speaking from behind the scenes in much third person narrative fiction.
Over the page, we find a few words of Cynthian:
"...wan-yao, jan-gwo chai reng pfs-s-st..." (p. 160)
- to add to the few that we have been told of Planha. (See Fictional Languages.)
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Also,if my memory is correct, another reason Falkayn insisted on going to Babur was a lingering sense of guilt over breaking his oath of fealty to van Rijn due to not reporting his discovery of Mirkheim to Old Nick.
Ad astra! Sean
Experience educates your intuition, the subconscious process of correlation that ends in those "aha!" moments Poul shows so well.
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